I have never understood how people who claim to love rock or pop can also claim to hate jazz. Jazz and blues are the source of virtually all American popular music.

And the source of all that is mostly contained in a little set of records called Hot Fives and Sevens.

Louis Armstrong did not invent jazz. He was not the first great jazz trumpet player. He wasn’t the most experienced band leader. He was something different altogether. Armstrong was the focal point that crystalized a small, regional musical style and helped the nation, the world, begin to hear music differently.

The record collection title refers to the number of musicians in the group for the recordings, five or seven, and “hot” refers to a style of jazz, popularized in Chicago. Take the young genius of Armstrong, steeped in New Orleans jazz, have him spend time playing on riverboats up and down the Mississippi, add the discipline and excitement of Chicago, then head for New York City, and what you end up with is something new, exciting, something vibrant and alive. And all of that is captured on these scratchy little recordings.

What can you hear when you listen to these recordings? You can hear improvisational joy. And you hear a moment in time. These records were recorded between 1925 and 1928. And these were the records played around the country, spreading a manic energy and exuberance. Just listen to West End Blues. When I hear that I feel the goosebumps rise and I’m in 1928. Listen to Heebie Jeebies and imagine yourself dancing in a crowded, smoky basement speakeasy. And then there’s the St. Louis Blues, St. James Infirmary, and Black and Blue. The tracks on these recording helped to set the standards for jazz musicians for decades to follow.

At the time when these recordings were new they captured the imagination of the young in America. In just a few short years jazz and swing would dominate virtually all popular music. While you might think of jazz and Big Band music to be the sound of your grandparents’ youth, at that time it was revolutionary, more startling than Elvis was in the 1950s and Rock in the 1960s. This was really new, truly shocking. Not only did these recordings change popular music, but they helped to change how people spoke, the words they used, and the way they saw themselves as uniquely young and American. And they helped to challenge ideas about race in very fundamental ways.

Let’s go back to West End Blues and listen to Armstrong’s virtuoso trumpet call at the beginning. It’s still thrilling, pure, and deeply musical. Listen to Don’t Forget To Mess Around. It is messier, looser, and more fun than the rigid Charleston. These recordings touch on and leap off from ragtime, blues, sweet and hot musical styles. If you fired up your time-machine retrofitted Delorian and headed back to 1928 you couldn’t put together a more thorough or complete record of the sounds of the time and place.

These recordings need to be in your collection.

Amazon Link: Hot Fives & Sevens

 
More Required Listening

Required Listening: Hot Fives and Sevens is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

It’s all about sunshine.

Jen was home from college the other day and when we settled into Cinema Murray to watch a movie, she said, “Have you seen Sunshine? I really liked it and would watch it again.”

We had not, but it was on my list to watch. I didn’t have it in my DVD library (although there are over 940 other titles there), so I switched the systems to Apple TV. We first searched the Netflix streaming service, but it wasn’t there, so a quick check on iTunes and we found it, rented it for $3.99, and watched it on the spot. We really enjoyed it. And the experience was no different than having the DVD physically in a player.

Afterwards, we talked about how much we enjoyed Danny Boyle’s movies, and I mentioned 28 Days Later, his “fast” zombie movie. Once again I searched Netflix, then iTunes. The sequel, 28 Weeks Later was there, but not the original.

So I pulled out my iPad, searched Amazon, and bought a used DVD copy, shipped, for under $5.

It’s a wonderful world we live in, but it frustrates me to no end how stupid and short-sighted the TV and movie studios are. They scream about piracy, the lost jobs and stolen revenue and yet they don’t do the one thing that would virtually end piracy and let them tap untold billions of dollars of revenue every year.

When I bought the used DVD, the studio made nothing, not one dime. If they had made the movie available online we would have watched it the next night and they would have pocketed a couple of bucks. Frankly, even priced at ninety nine cents, they’d have made something. But because they’re so stubborn and blind they made nothing. I sometimes feel like Moses leading the tribes around in the desert for forty years, waiting for the old and stubborn generation to die off, before leading the new generation into the promised land. Are we waiting for a stubborn and wrongheaded generation of studio executive to die off before a younger, smarter generation will do what they should have done years ago?

“People are stealing our property!” they cry. I’m not, but yes, other people are. For the most part, the people who download movies for free fall into two categories: people who would never have paid you in the first place, and people who can’t get it any other way.

The only effective way to fight digital piracy is to make everything available digitally, in high quality, and charge a reasonable price for it. By reasonable I mean as little as possible. The movie studios have over one hundred years of movies in their vaults. The long tail tells us that someone, somewhere, would pay for every single movie every made, if they were only available. Even at ninety nine cents for most of movies, that’s likely to be billions and billions of dollars. Every freaking year. Billions of dollars the studios aren’t making now. It’s like walking around on money but being too stupid and stubborn to stoop over and pick it up.

Stoop down and take it. Forget about piracy. Simply embrace the digital and rake in the dough.

I would like one more thing: a service like iTunes Match for DVDs. I’d pay a low yearly fee that would allow me to register all of the DVDs I’ve bought, then allow Apple, or whoever, to allow me to stream any of these movies from the cloud to any of my devices. iTunes Match for music is brilliant. What makes a movie any different?

Here’s my simple plea to the movie and TV studios: take my money, please! There are so many movies and TV shows that I’d pay you to watch, if only you’d let me.

Billions Of Dollars, Theirs For The Taking is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

There are legal requirement that outline what you can and cannot do to fire an employee. You’ll need to find out what those are for your area. But there’s also the task of firing itself. Very few people like to talk about this, let alone, provide training.

You may use different terms, “We’re letting you go.” Terminated, laid off, separated. It all boils down to ending a person’s job and relationship with an organization.

There can be many reasons for firing someone. Performance problems, a business downturn, a need for different skills. Whatever the reason you are unilaterally and forcefully ending a person’s job. And you do no one any favors by delaying or dragging it out. Waiting can have very serious consequences for your business.

Over the years I’ve had to fire far too many people. It is never pleasant and it has taken its toll on me. I’m sure that there are still people who greatly dislike me because of my role in their firing. I do my firing face to face, so I know the pain of the moment. I’ve been fired, too. Call it what you will, it’s painful. You can make it less painful by doing it right.

As a manager, you must be able to fire and fire well. You must know the circumstances under which you’ll fire an employee. And you must completely understand this before you hire your first staff members.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

1. Once you’ve decided to fire someone, do it immediately. Do not decide, and then wait a few days/weeks/months. That’s poison to you and your organization.
2. Do it professionally. Have your paperwork completely organized and the process and checklists ready. Meet with the person that you’re firing and have a witness there, too. Tell them plainly and simply and inform them about the process. Ideally, you tell them, then have someone else run the process.
3. Never, ever, reconsider once you’ve told someone you’re letting them go. That’s a prescription for disaster.
4. Once you’ve told them, run the process and have them leave immediately. Do not let them linger or stay for days/weeks/months.
5. Do all of your firing at once, and then tell the remaining employees that you don’t plan on doing any more at this time. Don’t let them stew and speculate.
6. Let your remaining employees grieve, but ask them to do it elsewhere, not on the job.
7. If it’s performance related, do not explain the reasons to the remaining employees beyond, “for performance reasons.”
8. If it’s business related, hold a meeting and explain the facts of life and your plan for turning things around.

Just like my advice on providing performance feedback, a firing should never be a surprise. If a person is not meeting your performance expectations, they should know that. If you’re having a business change, they should know that, too. Most of the people that I’ve laid off, fired, due to business changes had more sympathy than I had for myself. They understood and often agreed with the decision (people can understand while still being upset). In a few cases where I didn’t do a good job of letting employees know about the state of the business or tried to paint too rosy a picture, I’ve had some very difficult termination meetings. It makes me queasy now just to think about it.

And that’s the point. Firing is so emotionally difficult that many managers wait too long to do it. A good manager fires quickly when it becomes clear. If you wait too long, the problems increase and the tension on you, the manager, becomes extreme.

If you can’t fire, then don’t become a manager. Learn to do it well and your employees will help make it easier, even the ones you are letting go. And those left behind will respect you.

Please review your local laws and requirements on firing, terminating, or laying off employees.

More Management Essentials.

Management Essentials: How To Fire is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

You will never know if your writing really works until you hear it read out loud.

Some things look good on paper, or on the screen, but when read out loud they can be clumsy, awkward things. When you read your own writing, it needs to be, well, sayable, regardless of the style or approach that you are taking. If your writing cannot be spoken, then in some fundamental way it is broken.

Note: there are some forms of poetry that are strictly visual. Poets of this sort are excused from this assignment.

For me, my writing is a companion to spoken language. I strive for writing that could heard and understood as easily as it can be read. If something I’ve written causes me to pause and look hard at the page when I’m trying to read it out loud, I instantly know that something is wrong. Yes, I often write for customers who require very formal, technical, and even scientific language, but I still work hard to make it speakable.

And by making it speakable, you will come closer to making it understandable, clear, and complete.

For today’s assignment write a short piece of at least 200 words about the correct way to store an opened bottle of ketchup (refrigerated or not?). When you have edited it to your satisfaction, read the piece out loud, then rewrite as required.

Bonus points: have someone else read your piece to you. Do not stop or interrupt them.

Hint: this is also an excellent way to edit your own work.

Click here to view and complete previous writing assignments.

And buy a copy of the Writing Assignments book!

Writing Assignment: Read It Out Loud is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

My youngest daughter, a freshman at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), gave me a t-shirt for Christmas. It’s emblazoned with one of the more popular sayings around campus: “Crit Happens.”

It does indeed. RISD embraces criticism from the top to bottom. It’s a regular part of daily life there. It can be brutal and it is completely unavoidable. Criticism is part of the RISD’s culture. They revel in it. And it makes me giddy to think about it. I can’t express how jealous I am. I’m not a visual artist, but the intense creative environment is so exciting, so palpable, that every time I visit the campus I’m ready to dive back into school again.

It also reminds me of my time in college and grad school and time spent in writers’ groups. It reminds me of seeing my plays in performance and the rare and wonderful opportunity to hear people talk about my work. It’s not the praise and adoration I’m looking for. Applause is gratifying, but not all that useful. I’m continually hungry to hear what did and didn’t work, and why. Real artists are starving for good criticism.

Really good criticism isn’t just “I love it” or “I hate it.” It’s thoughtful and exploratory. Great crit helps the artist understand what they’re trying to do better than they did during the act of creation. It engages the mind and intellect in a way that writing or painting or playing an instrument does not. The act of creation is partly intellectual, but it is also visceral. The artist may start out with intentions, but then, if they’re prepared and lucky, something deeper takes hold. Sometimes it works, and criticism helps the artist to understand why, what it might mean, and how they could explore more deeply. When it doesn’t work, when the act of creation fails or doesn’t connect, criticism can help the artist to understand why.

If you are avoiding criticism, if you do not actively seek it out, then you will likely never reach your potential as a creator. It’s your job as a writer, an artist, to seek out the forums and opportunities where you can participate in full on, knives out criticism. Frankly, just publishing your work online isn’t enough. Reviews aren’t the same thing. What I need, what you need, is live, interactive, intentional criticism.

Go make some crit happen.

Crit Happens is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

I find this album difficult to write about. It is, essentially, an experience. It is very much music, and yet, it’s also about the act of listening.

Brian Eno was the person who coined the term, “ambient music,” and this was the first album of its kind. I know that for many, ambient music has come to mean “not music at all.” Many use the term ambient for recordings of random or muted repeating sounds, the kind of thing you’d find playing when you went for a massage.

Music for Airports is much more.

This is music, not just sound. There’s structure there, melody. But it’s also something of a hologram. There’s a three dimensionality about this piece. Listen, and you can walk around in the music. Listen, and you can imagine and see space, the architecture around you. Listen, and become completely centered and aware of yourself.

This isn’t an album to lose yourself in. You can find yourself in this music.

The album is divided into four sections, each referring to the original vinyl LP. 1/1 means “first track, first side.” The original album also had silence added to the end of each piece, 30 long seconds, building on and referring to the work of John Cage. The silence is important. Listen to it.

Pop music can be fun, energetic. Loud music can be invigorating (and sometimes enraging). But Eno’s invention, discovery, is exquisitely contemplative and beautiful. And it is eminently listenable.

I strongly recommend that you add Eno’s original 1978 recording to your collection. I also quite like the version by the experimental music group Bang on a Can (and it was one of the first CDs that I purchased).

Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music For Airports.
iTunes link

Bang On A Can’s Version of Music For Airports
iTunes link

Amazon – all versions: Ambient 1: Music for Airports

More Required Listening

Required Listening: Music For Airports is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

Managing is an important skill, but too often it is thrust upon the unsuspecting and unwilling. I’ve learned a lot about managing others though hard knocks, but also by making mistakes. Here’s the most importing thing I’ve learned about being a good manager: it’s not about being “the boss.” It’s helping others and helping yourself to get things done.

The best managers never deliver surprises. If you’re doing a poor job, you need to know it. Your manager needs to make it clear that he or she knows it, too, and immediately. Nothing is hidden or left unspoken. A good manager lets you know immediately and sets out a path for you to do better. A bad manager saves things up to use as weapons against you. Good managers don’t let employees speculate.  If there’s a problem coming up, too much work, not enough work, a major shakeup, a good manager informs you. You are never left in the dark. Managers like this are rare and precious.

There should never be a time, especially during a performance review, where your manager surprises you with stored up lists of failures and poor performance issues. That, in itself, is a clear sign that you have a bad manager.

But it is very hard to learn to manage well.

Here’s the first step: if you want to be a really good and really effective manager you’ll need to learn to deal immediately with any and all performance problems.

When you, as a manager, see something happening that doesn’t go as you expected, immediately address it. Do not store it up for later. For example, someone misses a deadline. Don’t shrug it off. Sit down on the spot and discuss it. Right that minute.

I’d recommend this process:

1. Ask first: were we clear about the deadline and what we wanted?
2. Allow no equivocation. Don’t let the other person to jump to excuses. Be firm and let them know that you’ll discuss that soon. The first step is getting agreement that everyone was clear about the deadline and the deliverables.
3. Once you have agreement move on to “why that didn’t happen” – the excuses.
4. Once the excuses were listed, discuss why they affected the deliverable and how the employee could have worked to eliminate them OR notified you early enough for you to do something about them.
5. Set a plan for the future with clear steps. Don’t repeat the same mistake.
6. Follow up. When a project comes in on time, repeat this process and find out what worked. Do that again. If another deadline is missed, bring out the notes from this past review, repeat the process, and refine.
7. Never let a problem go unnoticed.

If you follow a process like this, one where you listen, make notes, and show that you hold clear standards and are willing to work with employees to make effective changes, you’ll find that you can achieve miracles.

And you’ll never have to deliver a surprise performance review again.

More Management Essentials.

Management Essentials: How To Address A Performance Problem is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

Here is a shameful truth about today’s business environment: the vast majority of the people who manage others and operate businesses have had no training and very little assistance in learning the basics of management. Good management skills are too often thought of as natural personal qualities. If you’re good at a job, you’ll be good at managing and leading others.

That turns out not to be the case. Managing others is difficult. Running a business is surprisingly difficult. I spent the best part of my 25+ years inside businesses managing, not because I was naturally gifted or trained, but because I accumulated experience managing others. I was glad to leave it behind to focus on what I’m really good at: writing. But I had to become a good manager to survive and prosper in business. I wish I’d had more help and training early in my career. Good managers need to be trained, mentored, coached, and ideally, apprenticed to great managers.

That’s why I’m starting this new series: Management Essentials. I’ll share with you some of the lessons I’ve learned, some of them the hard way, and give you some things that will help you manage employees, even virtual ones, and, perhaps, manage yourself and your own time better.

In this series I’ll cover:

• How to fire (you’ll need to think this through before you hire your first employees).
• Eliminating busywork — no employees simply filling time.
• How to hire.
• Giving constructive criticism.
• What to do with a smelly employee. Seriously.
• No bad moods.
• How much goofing off to allow—and when to encourage it.
• The role of social media for the “shop floor” employee.

Tomorrow: how to deal with performance problems.

More Management Essentials.

Management Essentials: How To Manage, Lead, and Succeed In Today’s Workplace is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

There are few things in life as pleasurable as putting on a new pair of thick cotton gym socks.

Actually, there are many things. They are typically simple, inconsequential things, but they bring us pleasure. They feel good to us, evoke memories, or alleviate a problem or pain we’ve endured. They make us smile because they are simple, often private recognitions and momentary awareness of the uniqueness and special qualities of life.

The other day my wife bought me a bag of new white gym socks, the kind that go up over your ankle, but not up your calf (those I do not care for). The socks I’ve been wearing for the last few years were transparent at the heels. I’d been tossing them out, sock by sock, as they wore though. I can’t say I was excited about opening a bag of socks, but as I pulled the first one on it was as if I’d forgotten what a sock was.

This new one was thick and soft and hugged my foot to a forgotten degree of snugness. There were no sags or gaps and no rubbing against my worn running shoes. For a moment I considered adding new socks to my monthly shopping list so I could feel like this all of the time. I thought for a while about making these socks, so white that they glow, a part of my standard uniform, which typically consists of faded jeans and a pirate t-shirt. Instead of putting them in the clothes hamper at night, I’d put the socks in the rag bin and take out a fresh pair from the stacks of new and never-worn ones, always reveling in their perfect caressing fluffiness. Perhaps I could start up a blog and twitter feed about socks . . .

Or I could enjoy this simple pleasure and get on with my day.

For today’s assignment, take a moment and let your enthusiasm for something simple, something special, run wild. Don’t try to be clever or to find something that many others will share. Just take that one little thing that makes you unexpectedly happy and write about it.

If you’re not writing this assignment with a smile on your face you’re doing it wrong.

Click here to view and complete previous writing assignments.

And buy a copy of the Writing Assignments book!

Writing Assignment: Rhapsodize On A Simple Pleasure is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

If you’re going to wear your 6th generation iPod Nano as a watch, you’re going to need a case and band for it. I picked the LunaTik RedRun for its combination of great style, solid design, and comfort.

I like it.

This is a case that is designed to install your iPod Nano in and leave it there. I haven’t removed mine since I tightened the four screws into place and don’t plan on ever taking it out. If you want something that you can easily remove, consider LunaTik’s snap-in design TikTok (I have not tested this model).

There are several other color varieties, black, silver, even camo, but I really like the red and black combination. My silver Nano looks great with the contrast (visible only on the sides for button and port access and underneath, displaying the Apple logo for only you to see when the band is off your wrist).

On my wrist the RedRun looks like a big sports watch. But be careful. It offers only a little protection from bumps. The iPod Nano doesn’t gain any water resistance and only a little shock protection from the case. I have to keep reminding myself to not let it get wet. This is a bigger problem than you might imagine. Every visual clue tells you that this is a rugged and tough watch. It is not (the case may be, but the iPod is not).

I really do enjoy wearing it. I may be off base, but I feel like I’m prototyping the future by wearing it. And it does keep it the iPod accessible, giving me the benefit of the Nike+ app to track my daily steps and to have a radio with me all of the time. That’s cool. And it plays music.

If you’re interested, visit the LunaTik site and watch the installation video. It’s not really tricky, but you’ll want to know what you’re doing and it will make it clear that this is pretty much a permanent installation. Yes, you can get it out, but you probably won’t. Not often.

I’m wearing mine now.

Pros: Attractive, comfortable, durable.
Cons: Pricey, semi-permanent installation (not easy to remove), offers little protection.

Reviewed: The LunaTik RedRun iPod Nano Watch Band is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!